In Spite of Lions

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In Spite of Lions Page 13

by Pike Scarlette


  “Then the Ngaka gave us the gospel and we were all joyful, knowing about our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ.”

  The tribe looked even more uncomfortable.

  “Eat! Eat!” Sechele spoke suddenly, his story abruptly over.

  Sechele had prepared for this feast well. We were served with a constant stream of peanuts, roasted maize, boiled roots that I was told were called manioc, guavas, and honey, along with the roasted ox meat that had been so meticulously prepared. My little family and I ate until our bellies were full.

  I noticed a tiny face peering at me from behind Sechele’s back. This would not have gained my attention by itself. Almost all the faces were still staring at me, but this little face was smiling. I grinned back. And he giggled and covered his mouth as if I had told a terrific joke. This made me smile wider. He could not be older than nine years old. His face held that same wisdom mixed with amusement that Sechele’s held.

  Mary noticed my amusement and smiled as well. She turned her face to me and spoke the boy’s name.

  “Motsatsi, son of Sechele.”

  Soon, we were excused and started the walk back home. I carried Agnes as she slept, full and happy on my shoulder.

  The children tucked in, the meat removed from the smoldering fire, and our good nights said, I settled into my first night as a missionary in the city of Kolobeng. As hot as the day had been, the evening was delightfully refreshing.

  I fell asleep in a new home.

  Chapter 12

  We started the day, and all the days to follow, at six a.m. We gathered together in the common room amidst all our sleeping rooms for a morning family worship. David would read long passages from the Bible while we sat and contemplated our place in the eternities. These mornings I thoroughly enjoyed. Shortly after, we breakfasted. This meal regularly consisted of porridge made by Mary with my prepared fire, and rusks, which were a simple hard biscuit. Breakfast cleared and dishes cleaned, David, with the occasional assistance from Robert, would go to milk the cows. He once said that all ten of his cows combined could not produce as much milk as one Scottish cow from his boyhood. Nevertheless, we made great use of the milk and cream they produced, and so he accomplished his milking while I began my lessons.

  My first lesson in survival was soap making. I confessed to Mary I did not know the first thing about soap, truly. In fact, as I learned, it is made from ashes of a particular plant called saltwort. I made a large fire of saltwort plants, then as it died down, Mary and I retrieved a tray of molds to house the soap. Mary showed me how to use the ashes to make a paste into the molds. They would need to sit for six weeks. The process amazed me. Out of the ashes came the secret to personal hygiene.

  Immediately after the soaps were poured into their molds, Mary took me to her small lean-to kitchen on the side of the house. I thought of the massive kitchen at my mother’s house where fifty of Mary’s lean-tos could fit inside. Although it could not have been later than eight a.m., a steady stream of perspiration ran the full length down my back.

  David ground some wheat for Mary, and she brought all the ingredients together for bread while I watched flabbergasted. Mary knew how to do everything, I was convinced. She showed me how to knead the dough, and I felt confident my fire making had made my arms stronger to help her. Unfortunately, even with my newly acquired strength, Mary had to finish my kneading after only five minutes of my attempts.

  I looked around myself for the oven. None could be seen. I took a few steps outside the space and looked on the other side of the shed. Nothing. Just rocks. Mary came up behind me with the pans of raw dough in her hands.

  “Follow me, Miss Anna, I will need your assistance,” she demanded.

  We walked about five minutes from the house before she halted. She had stopped at, what appeared to me, a rock that was slightly bigger than the rest.

  “Please lift that large rock, Miss Anna,” she said simply.

  My mouth gaped open and I stood motionless.

  I stuttered, “M-Mary?”

  “Do as I tell you,” was all the explanation she gave me.

  Baffled and hesitant, I leaned over and spread my arms wide over the large mass. Shifting my hands around, I soon found a most fortunate grasp and pulled up with all I had. Surprisingly, the stone came up in my hands and I was able to carry it only a few feet from where it lay. I was happy with myself as I set it down. I would not have guessed I was capable of that. I turned to Mary, who smiled at me in pride.

  “Was there a purpose to my Herculean display of strength?” I asked in mock humility. “Or were you simply morbidly curious?”

  Mary actually chuckled!

  “This is our oven, Miss Anna,” Mary explained, at last. She squatted down and placed her pans in a hole the stone had been covering. “The heat is trapped inside the hole when the rock covers it.” I ducked down to get a closer look at what the space consisted of. Upon very close inspection, I could see hundreds of minuscule ant trails all around the opening.

  “Is it an anthill?” I inquired of her.

  “It used to be,” she responded. “It has been neglected for years. David discovered it for me when we first arrived in Kolobeng. Isn’t he clever?” She smiled.

  “The cleverest,” I returned, still amazed. Via Mary’s instructions, I carefully returned the flat rock and we returned home, allowing the bread to bake for several hours.

  Once back in the lean-to, Mary stated it was time for lunch and pulled a large pot of soup, already prepared, from a cupboard in her lean-to. She amazed me again!

  “Where did you get that?” I asked, sincerely confused.

  “Oh, Anna,” she answered, smiling, “I have to be at the beginning, middle, and end of everything. If I had not prepared this meal last night, we would not have anything for lunch right now.”

  I considered that. I had not thought about what we would eat for lunch the next day. I had not begun to think that far in advance. Not yet. But Mary thought hours, days, months, and years ahead. That was what made her successful.

  I peered at the soup. She had finished cooking the meat Sechele had given us, cubed it, and made this soup with it.

  “And do you never grow weary?” I implored. “Being at the beginning, middle, and end of everything? You must get frustrated.”

  She shrugged modestly. “When I first began my life as the wife of a missionary, I had lived with my parents in a more established and stationary missionary center with my nine brothers and sisters constantly around me. After I left them, the solitary nature of mobile missionary work depressed me. After one particularly frustrating day I said to myself, ‘Is this the sort of work I have left home and friends to spend my life doing in this uncongenial land?’” She paused to shake her head at her past exclamations that I would have thought perfectly justified. She continued. “But I heard a voice within say, ‘Ah! If I may be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for the temple of my God, am I not still blessed and privileged beyond words?’”

  “This was a landmark in my life. I realized my chief work is to keep my husband up—up from sinking down, down gradually into native style of living—and from losing heart and spirit in that great work, in which I but act as an organ-blower to the musician.”

  She smiled simply, joyful. I stood in awe. How had I lived to this point and never met anyone like Mary? She was the embodiment of humility and self-denial. She had made herself simply a doorway through which one could see God on the other side.

  That night, David held a small sermon, which he invited the entire tribe to. We set out blankets around our little fire near the white house. Mary had prepared biscuits and some vegetable soup. I asked her if she always provided refreshment.

  “Neither civilization nor Christianity can be promoted alone,” she spoke wisely. “If they are encouraged to strengthen their spirits by strengthening their bodies, I am happy to oblige.”

  After all the preparations were made, David buried himself in his notes and Bible. Mary sat dar
ning a few socks. Robert and Agnes were throwing a ball back and forth. Slowly, a few members of the tribe came to sit around our fire. I smiled to them in welcome. They timidly grinned back. Sechele arrived last and sat among his people, in no special place of honor. He smiled and joked with the people around him, grasping shoulders and nodding hello to everyone around him. A child came to sit on his lap. I did not know if it was his child or not.

  David began his service. He was teaching about the day of judgment straight from his Bible.

  “‘For surely a day of judgment must come. Where all men must be brought to kneel at the feet of the Savior and report their deeds, whether they be good or whether they be evil.

  “‘Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, and the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and hell delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.’”

  My eyes wandered. I regarded Sechele, who once wore his usual smile, had now become much more serious. As David continued to teach, Sechele became more troubled.

  The speech ended, the food gone, and bellies satisfied, everyone turned themselves in the direction of their beds. Sechele stayed behind to speak with David. He was still upset.

  “Did your forefathers know of this future judgment?” he asked.

  “Yes,” David answered.

  Sechele shook his head.

  “You frighten me. These words make all my bones to shake.” He put his hand on David’s shoulder as if to steady himself. “My forefathers were living at the same time yours were, and how is it they did not send to tell them about these things? They all passed away in darkness without knowing whither they were going.”

  David was silent. He had no answer, no solace.

  Sechele sent three of his wives home the next morning. David brought the news home. Sechele had sent them all home with many new possessions and fine things. The families of the women, however, were still extremely upset. David did not feel they would act out violently. They were not prone to hostility, especially with the missionaries.

  “Which wife did he keep?” I asked.

  “Selemeng. She is the wife he married first,” David explained. I must have been correct in my assumption at their seating arrangements at the feast. Selemeng was seated closest to Sechele.

  “I feel sad to have the children separated in this way,” I said.

  “Oh, the children will stay with their father,” David explained. “It will only be the wives that must return home.”

  My chest tightened.

  “You mean the mothers will be separated from their children?” I asked, incredulous. I looked to Mary to see her reaction—but there was none. I turned back to David.

  “It is their way. The mothers would feel even more shame if their children did not get to claim being raised by a chief. I am sure there will be no resistance from them.”

  He paused for a moment and let me digest this. “It seems with the announcement of his baptism, the biggest concern of the people is that Sechele will no longer perform the rain making ritual,” he explained.

  “What is rain making exactly?” I asked, interested. “Obviously it must be where they try to summon moisture, but how is it done?”

  “Oh, it is a very superstitious practice,” he explained. “They will sometimes use charcoal made from burned bats, jackal livers, baboon, and lion hearts to smear on their bodies or on the earth. A traditional dance is performed. It is all out of desperation, I feel.”

  “But they feel the rain depends on Sechele’s ceremony?”

  “They do indeed,” he said gravely.

  “No doubt they will feel much better when Sechele is baptized and the rain continues regardless,” Mary commented.

  “That may be true,” David agreed.

  The baptism was held the first Sunday in October. Despite it being the beginning of their hot season, a large crowd had gathered. A mixture of morbidly curious and vehemently opposed individuals stood together on the banks of the Kolobeng river. Some, I had heard, came to see if Sechele would drink man’s brains. Because I could not understand their language, I tried to read the questions on their faces. I felt I had a pretty good idea.

  “Why is he doing this to us?” I imagined them asking. “Why forsake our ancestor’s traditions?” Betrayal drifted in the air, filling in the cracks of the ever-present confusion and anger. The general mood of the group triggered a feeling of déjà vu in me, but I could not exactly place how this situation was similar to any other I had experienced.

  My attention was diverted by one small group of women who sat silently together, but apart from the rest. Sechele’s discarded wives. Before, I had seen them conversing excitedly with one another at the tribal assembly. Now, a word could not be drawn from them. They sat silently, their hair still short from the recent style change, and the evidence of their cut dresses still present, although two of them had sewed the hole back up again. The sight of them broke my heart. Their short hair and torn garments now seemed to be a mark of shame they could not reverse.

  Still, there was much to admire them for. If they had not truly loved Sechele, they would surely have moved far away, yet here they sat. Hurt, but present. Supportive, although disgraced. I moved to stand near them. Something inside of me wanted to comfort them, and this was the only method I could conjure.

  A low hum of Sechuana pulsed from the crowd, until the participants in the baptism arrived. David held a special communion with Sechele and his children before the ceremony. Now they came toward us, dressed in white. Their happy smiles grew smaller and smaller the closer they came to our little group. I tried to catch their eyes and smile, but they were consumed with the bluntness of the depressed group. Sechele, wearing a cloak David had ordered from Scotland, set out to walk up the hill with Selemeng, who seemed no longer resistant to the new religion. Presumably it suited her to be the only wife left and the queen.

  David took Sechele into the water first. A baptismal chair sat immovable in the rushing current, tall, white, and impressively detailed with angels, flowers, and crosses. The chair had arrived only two days ago, despite being ordered from America more than two years ago, and had spent that time being made and then being carted on one ship after another, onto one dock after another, and then onto several wagons, arriving just in time. David and Sechele saw it as a sign that God was pleased. The chair was regal and beautiful, made even more so by the chief sitting so happily on it. Mary and the children smiled proudly at David, and he smiled back. Sechele smiled at his children, who were obviously affected by the mood of the crowd because they stayed silent and unsmiling. The prayer was said, and David doused Sechele in water. Several members of the tribe shouted out in alarm, I whipped around to see one woman kneeling on the ground sobbing as if she had lost a family member. I felt a strange moment of déjà vu as I watched her. A sharp pain came to my heart and my stomach dropped to my knees. The tribe’s people felt that Sechele was distancing himself from them. They felt that he was discarding them for no discernible reason.

  I could relate to this misery.

  I rushed forward instinctively to help her off the ground. As I gently put one hand under her elbow, she jerked away from me and was up on her feet so quickly I jumped in fright.

  “Baloi!” she spoke quietly, so as to not gather attention from the chief, but so menacingly that I took a step back from her sudden hostility. I looked around myself for some explanation. The people around me simply looked at me with similar expressions. It seemed they agreed with whatever she had called me. I hastily r
etreated closer to the river and to Mary, my eyes downcast.

  As Sechele opened his eyes, the droplets ran off his face one by one. The sun shone off his face and he was solemn and contemplative. David offered his hand, and they stood together in the water a few moments before Sechele nodded. He looked to David and one side of his mouth rose in a half smile. He spoke in Sechuana and David grinned appreciatively. Sechele put one arm around David’s shoulders and they exited the river as the comrades they were.

  I looked around to my companions. A slight change had overcome a few of them. They seemed relieved, as if they had been expecting an explosion, and now had found themselves safe. A few looked truly touched. For the most part, however, the group remained staunch and unmoving. David continued baptizing Sechele’s children as I observed the people. Across our group of about two hundred souls, I recognized a face I had seen once before. David’s Boer friend, Abraham, the leader of the band of Boers, stood in our midst. I turned myself to observe him. He was as angry and hostile as before, his wide hat casting a harsh line of shadow on his face. The lines seemed deeper on his face. I felt incredible pity for him and his family. They had been attacked by Dingane and were still healing. He sensed my gaze and turned to me.

  “You’re a part of the tribe now?” he asked me bluntly.

  “Yes, I am trying,” I responded.

  “Why?”

  I tilted my head, pondering.

  “I enjoy their company.”

  He stared at me, emotionless for a moment, then shook his head, turned, and walked away.

  I broke my gaze from him and saw Sechele staring at his back. His countenance was saddened.

  Now that all of the children were baptized, the group began to scatter. I noticed none of them spoke with the chief. I suppose they didn’t know what to say. I approached him, however.

  “Congratulations, Kgosi Sechele.” I shook his hand. “It is a happy day!” I don’t know if I was attempting to convince him or myself.

 

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